Arsenal in the summer of 1931. The records are totted up and the Scandinavian tour.

By Tony Attwood

This is the 12th article in the series Arsenal in the 1930s. The index to all the articles in the series can be seen at the foot of the article.

On 2 May 1931 Arsenal ended their first ever League Championship season beating Bolton 5-0 to set up a record 66 point league total. Jack Lambert scored two to make it 38 goals in 34 games (also a new record). David Jack scored two to make it 31 goals in 35 games.

The team for this match was identical to the team for the first match of the season, except for the goalkeeper – William Harper retaining his place. The final league table looked like this

Pos

Team

P

W

D

L

F

A

GAv

Pts

1

Arsenal

42

28

10

4

127

59

2.153

66

2

Aston Villa

42

25

9

8

128

78

1.641

59

3

Sheffield Wednesday

42

22

8

12

102

75

1.360

52

4

Portsmouth

42

18

13

11

84

67

1.254

49

5

Huddersfield Town

42

18

12

12

81

65

1.246

48

6

Derby County

42

18

10

14

94

79

1.190

46

7

Middlesbrough

42

19

8

15

98

90

1.089

46

8

Manchester City

42

18

10

14

75

70

1.071

46

9

Liverpool

42

15

12

15

86

85

1.012

42

10

Blackburn Rovers

42

17

8

17

83

84

0.988

42

11

Sunderland

42

16

9

17

89

85

1.047

41

12

Chelsea

42

15

10

17

64

67

0.955

40

13

Grimsby Town

42

17

5

20

82

87

0.943

39

14

Bolton Wanderers

42

15

9

18

68

81

0.840

39

15

Sheffield United

42

14

10

18

78

84

0.929

38

16

Leicester City

42

16

6

20

80

95

0.842

38

17

Newcastle United

42

15

6

21

78

87

0.897

36

18

West Ham United

42

14

8

20

79

94

0.840

36

19

Birmingham City

42

13

10

19

55

70

0.786

36

20

Blackpool

42

11

10

21

71

125

0.568

32

21

Leeds United

42

12

7

23

68

81

0.840

31

22

Manchester United

42

7

8

27

53

115

0.461

22

The success of Arsenal’s now-perfected counter attacking style can be seen by considering Arsenal’s home and away records for the season.

At home Arsenal were four points behind Villa.

Pos

Team

P

W

D

L

G

G

GAvg

Pts

1

Aston Villa

21

17

3

1

86

34

2.529

37

2

Arsenal

21

14

5

2

67

27

2.481

33

3

Middlesbrough

21

13

5

3

57

28

2.036

31

4

Sheffield Wednesday

21

14

3

4

65

32

2.031

31

5

Blackburn Rovers

21

14

3

4

54

28

1.929

31

Away however Arsenal more than made up for the difference at home…

Pos

Team

P

W

D

L

F

A

GAv

Pts

1

Arsenal

21

14

5

2

60

32

1.875

33

2

Aston Villa

21

8

6

7

42

44

0.955

22

3

Sheffield Wednesday

21

8

5

8

37

43

0.860

21

4

Huddersfield Town

21

8

4

9

36

38

0.947

20

5

Portsmouth

21

7

6

8

38

41

0.927

20

Meanwhile, Tottenham’s huge downturn towards the end of the season meant that they could look forward to a fourth consecutive season in the second division.

Pos

Team

P

W

D

L

F

A

GAv

GD

Pts

1

Everton

42

28

5

9

121

66

1.833

55

61

2

West Bromwich Albion

42

22

10

10

83

49

1.694

34

54

3

Tottenham Hotspur

42

22

7

13

88

55

1.600

33

51

4

Wolverhampton W

42

21

5

16

84

67

1.254

17

47

5

Port Vale

42

21

5

16

67

61

1.098

6

47

The records show that the Arsenal squad for the season contained three Scotsmen (Harper, James and Johnstone, two Welshmen John and Jones, and Indian goalkeeper (Preedy) and a Dutch Keeper (Keyser). The remainder of the squad were English…

Arsenal played 42 league games and three FA Cup games in this league winning season. Of the 22 players used the number of appearances breaks down as

10 or fewer games: 7 players.

11 to 20 games: 3 players

21 to 30 games: 3 players

31 to 40 games: 3 players

41 to 45 games: 6 players

But perhaps it is in the goalscoring that we should focus most attention. Arsenal scored 127 league goals and six FA Cup goals – 133 in total. Here is what the four main goalscorers got…

Player

Games

Goals

Goals/game

% of total

Bastin

45

29

0.64

22%

Jack

38

33

0.87

25%

Lambert

36

39

1.08

29%

Hulme

35

16

0.45

12%

In short these four men scored 88% of Arsenal’s goals. Bastin, amazingly, played in every single league and cup game in his first full season with Arsenal (he had joined in, in the second half of the previous season and played in the FA Cup final). Undoubtedly Arsenal were aided by all four men staying fit for most of the season – and the fact that they had behind them the amazing Alex James, the most perfect inside right, who himself missed only three games.

Before the end of the season, Arsenal had already arranged a series of friendly matches, given their new high profile of having become FA Cup winners the season before.

The first game was on 4 May 1931: Northampton 0 Arsenal 1. Chapman returned to his earlier days as manager, in the second in a series of three friendlies at Northampton, set up in order to help Northampton recover from a devastating fire at their ground. 7503 attended the game, which saw an appearance for Bert Diaper a nephew of Tom Parker. He had played for Cowes on the Isle of Wight, and played in the Combination team. He gained one other game in the tour, but after that vanished from the club although we do know he played for Fulham between 1933 and 1935. Lambert got the Arsenal goal.

On 9 May 1931 Dan Lewis was transferred to Gillingham. He is forever remember as the Welsh goalkeeper who spilled the ball in Arsenal’s first FA Cup final, to allow Cardiff to score.

After this Arsenal went on a 20 day seven match tour of Denmark and Sweden. Throughout the tour the team was pretty much the league winning side with just occasional games for the less regular players

17 May: Danish XI 1 Arsenal 5 (10,000). Haynes, who had played two league games in the season, got a run out, and Brain, Parkin, Thompson and Bastin got the goals, with one own goal. Ray Parkin was at the club from 1928 to 1936 but only got 25 league games. He did however, in those 25 games, score 11 goals!

22 May: Stockholm Combined XI 1 Arsenal 5 (6,000). Williams, Parkin (2), Sidey and Bastin scored. Norman Sidey was at the club from 1929 to his retirement in 1939 and played 40 league games for the club during those ten years.

3 June: Gothenburg Combination 2 Arsenal 3. Jack, Lambert and Bastin scored. This was the last senior appearance of Jimmy Brain and in September 1931 he moved to Tottenham for a transfer fee of £2,500. He had played 204 league games for Arsenal and scored 125 goals including what was, at the time, a club record 34 goals in the 1925/6 season. For Tottenham and played 47 games for Tottenham and scored 10.

And with that, Arsenal FC, Champions of England for the first time ever, went on holiday.

There was one other piece of transfer activity however, although one that is rarely recalled. On 4 July 1931Tommy Black joined Arsenal from Strathclyde. He played 16 reserve games in 1932/3 before playing in the notorious defeat to Walsall in the FA Cup. He was transferred to Plymouth Argyle six days after the Walsall game.

1 comment to Arsenal in the summer of 1931. The records are totted up and the Scandinavian tour.

Thank you Tony for a very informative and interesting analysis of the fantastic 1930-31 season. Great players in any era make a difference and Alex James, Cliff Bastin, Eddie Hapgood, David Jack and Joe Hulme (and later in the ’30s Ted Drake) would still be strong contenders to be in any Arsenal’s best ever team squad in my opinion. They were backed up by other high class players such as Herbie Roberts, Bob John, Jack Lambert and Charlie Jones and the reserves who only made an occasional appearance always fitted into the style of play and were more than adequate. Even compared to modern times it represented a very strong squad in the days when no substitutes were allowed. Looking forward to your next 1930’s season which I guess will be the double runners up of 1931-31.